Attention computer guru's. Off topic.
shadowcat
Atlanta suburb
I have well over 2 hundred porno's on my hard drive. Some of them have been there for 5 years. During the last year 20-25% of them have gone bad. By that I mean that while they were 20-60 minutes long and they were complete when I saved them, they now play for a minute or two and then stop. Do they wear out? Do files go bad after time? I have tried switching media players. No help. Any suggestions? Should I just delete them? They were all downloaded using P2P sites.
15 comments
*compressor/decompressor, for example MPEG or divX. This is just a way to encode the data efficiently, but playback requires the specific "codec" that was used to compress it.
You can always run a good disk evaluation routine to check the integrity of your data, but I can not think of any "fixable" reason for your problem, sans a good backup.
That said, I am more to the opinion of the others there is a codec problem.
Go here
http://www.codecguide.com/download_k-lit…
and download the installer for the Mega codec pack (klmcodec485.exe).
Launch klmcodec485.exe
Hit 'Next' until you get to the 'Select Components' screen
Change profile to Profile 7 (Lots of Stuff)
Scroll down, check VC-1
Hit 'Next' til you get to Install, click 'Install'
Click 'Finish'
Start -> Programs -> K-Lite Codec Pack -> Media Player Classsic
This is Media Player Classic (MPC), a player designed to resemble Microsoft's Windows Media Player version 6.4, the last decent version before they started fucking it up.
Load some of your video files directly within MPC using File -> Open File
Hopefully they will all play OK. If not, report back, there are some troubleshooting utilities in the K-Lite pack.
Did you miss that shadowcat stated, "...they now play for a minute or two and then stop." I've never heard of a codec that isn't installed, start to work before "it" discovers that "it" isn't there and shouldn't be working!
Funny story. A hacker got into my computer 6 years ago. I was typing an email to my then ATF. He typed in FUCK YOU and hit the send button. I had to do some explaining! I have since changed my log in to a much more difficult name.
Computer hard drives are typically magnetic media (some are optical, some are solid-state, but I am reasonably certain yours are magnetic). The data are stored and read from this magnetic media, and over time, some parts of the media can become unusable or corrupt.
Peter Norton made his fortune developing utilities to address this fact.
Although there is a WMP for Macintosh, assume you're using a PC.
From his 2nd post I don't understand about the not having the right codec business, if WMP sez you don't have the right codec, there must be a codec issue, right? Thus my response.
So is this what's happening: ALL files, regardless of age, when opened give an initial error about not having the right codec. You cancel out of the error. You move the slider back to the beginning. ALL files begin to play, MOST play OK all the way thru, but SOME (the 37) play OK for 1-2 mins but stop. The ones that don't play now played OK back when they were downloaded.
What happens when they stop, a correct last "frozen" frame remains displayed, WMP play area goes black, WMP gives error or quits?
I still suspect his older files use older codecs (like AVI w/Intel Indeo 4 or 5). As time passes and new versions (6 thru 11) of WMP come out, the underlying codec files are updated too. These can get corrupted, and I suspect that newer versions of WMP may not play videos using the older codecs well.
The K-lite pack easily installs all the latest codecs properly, won't screw things up, and give you a nice player as well. If you don't want to do that, the VLC player uses its own codecs, was that one you tried?
If you still have one of the "bad" files you can send it to me thru this transfer service
http://www.transferbigfiles.com/Default.…
and I'll see if I can play it. That requires my email address which I'll send to Shadowcat in a private message.